Something lives underground in Kansas City. In my previous episode Last of us It showed that the threat of the infected is not outside the city. Kathleen and his lieutenant PerryStanding in the shadows, they saw the ground shake in a nightmarish pattern that portends something worse. The chaos that reigns on the surface, between bullets and threats, is a shadow of what lurks in the darkness. One who hopes to break free to attack and destroy the shaky world made by brute force.
So far, the Naughty Dog game adaptation has portrayed the apocalypse from a rarefied calm. As Joel said, the world was devastated in a few days, and the survivors are clinging to life with all the resources at their disposal. Phaedra created an authoritarian state based on fear, while Fireflies they long for a kind of radical freedom.
But in its fifth chapter, the series takes a direct turn to horror. He not only shows clickers (clickers) in all its splendor, as well as the cruelty of human violence. Both situations make those still exposed to cordyceps victims of fire and death, in addition to possible infection.
Last of us This is the premiere of the year and you can only see it on HBO Max.
What Lies Behind the Darkness in The Last of Us
Kansas City is free. This is what claims Kathleen while the streets around them tremble with arson and looting. Not a single soldier survived the siege of this armed group, enraged and thirsting for revenge. The screenplay by Craig Mazin turns the terrifying atmosphere of the source material into tension. Especially when it is necessary to show that civilization has fallen, but its worst features remain.
Waves of fire destroy everything in their path. Flames engulf buildings, bodies shaking on the ground, and small vegetation surrounding the streets. Jeremy Webb’s camera turns the chapter into scenes of fear beyond the danger of the infected.
In the pilot, director Craig Mazin detailed the outbreak through unstoppable chaos. For its part, the fifth is the dark opposite of this approach. This time, it’s not the monsters created from the contagion that kill and enjoy it. These are people under the command of an angry leader, convinced that everything around her must turn to ashes. “There is nothing but death or infection,” says Kathleen, almost resigned. The character is the embodiment of what Neil Druckmann envisioned for his reality, shattered by total catastrophe.
Good and evil after the apocalypse
The episode takes special care to show that Ellie and Joel’s journey is one of exploration, not a journey. Almost by accident, this led them to a scenario that no doubt multiplies in what was a country. They come from the quarantine center, subjected to military discipline, more interested in order than coexistence. Now they understand what is happening beyond the deserted places and the promises of the Fireflies.
Rebels thrive in chaos. In the total destruction of any order that tries to maintain a precarious balance of life among the rubble. In the middle of the night, while the search for Henry continues, armed groups celebrate massacres, executions in the middle of the street. Joel watches everything from the skyscraper, a place that has been a symbol of luxury and prosperity. They are accompanied by a fugitive and his brother Sam. Ellie realizes that what she has known so far in quarantine centers has been a minimal version of what goes on behind the walls.
Sacrificing for the Greater Good in The Last of Us
For now, Joel and Ellie’s journey has come to a halt. After the brothers find them, the priority will be to save their lives. Especially when he realizes that Kansas City is under siege and his chances of survival are slim. Like Henry, Kathleen tracks them down and targets them. Hunters are looking for them and are ready to kill them for no reason. “It’s a city of horrors,” Henry mutters wearily.
The script expands the universe Last of us to areas that you can guess in the game, but on the screen take on painful proportions. Henry explains the isolation of those who need to survive for others by drawing clear parallels between his situation and Joel’s. Craig Mazin’s plot shows the conflict that most of the survivors go through. “Who do you live for when everything’s fucked up?” the character wonders aloud. It’s the same approach that Bill takes in taking care of Frank and keeping him alive. The way Joel begins to understand Tess’ request for Ellie’s safety.
Despite the glaring differences from the origin story, the adaptation raises the same existential problems. At the same time, questions about what real danger lurks in the darkness lit by the fire that fills the street. About armed civilians ready to kill, or what thrives underground, close to escape?
Monsters come at midnight
But despite Kathleen’s insistence that Kansas City is safe in the hands of the people, it soon becomes clear that she is about to die. Whether it’s between increasingly hostile street clashes, a possible Phaedra attack, or what lies at the bottom of the darkness. In its final stretch, the production takes on the feel of a horror film and celebrates the genre in a long, terrifying sequence. The camera moves from side to side and simulates patiently watching a video game. When Henry, Sam, Joel and Ellie finally try to overcome the armed resistance and leave the city, noise from the outside world leads to the inevitable.
A horde of clickers (clickers) emerge from a crack in the ground amid the rumble of breaking concrete. For the first time, the series pays homage to the Naughty Dog console experience without trying to soften its impact. The figures that run around at night, hungry, are not human remains. Weak or confused beings. This is a wave of death that shows the complete transformation of the human body by fungal infections. And also what turned the world into ruins, fear and hopelessness.
Threat is everywhere
The infected swoop in to devour and infect, including Ellie and Joel. The first once again demonstrates its amazing immune resistance during a frontal attack. But amid the chaos, it becomes clear that his exceptional condition is a white spot in the midst of a large-scale tragedy.
Men and women fall down only to get up to join the terrifying crowd running down corners and alleyways. Jeremy Web manages to capture the destruction that Craig Mazin barely hinted at in the first episode. The effect spreads like a wave of cruelty that sweeps away everything in its path and eventually turns into absolute darkness.
Especially when Ellie needs to fully understand what that monstrous bite does. He does this by watching someone close transform and eventually die in a brutal and painful sequence that drives the plot in this case.
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Kansas City fell. Terror flourishes everywhere. In corpses rising from the ground with mustaches of infection around the lips. Those who run without looking back, aware that in any direction from the world there is only one and the same landscape.
Source: Hiper Textual
